Interview Qs: Xing again, With the end of WAFA the game, I’m interviewing Theo Chin, animator and Unity guy who basically built the bulk of the Were Glitch Project. -

We met through the Animation Capstone at the University of Washington. How did you get into animation?

I like to believe that I got into animation at a very young age. I remember back in 1st or 2nd grade, I got a couple of Captain Underpants books from a book fair. If you’ve ever read those books, you’ll probably remember the Flip O’rama sections which were basically two frame animations you’d flip between. I remember having so much fun with those, I decided to make my own versions on scrap notebook papers. Or maybe I made them because I ripped the book into shreds because of how fast I flipped those pages...but I digress. I made a few Flip O’ramas and I remember my mom actually gave me like 25 cents for each one I made. I guess that was my first ever profit as an animator. Thanks, mom!

In reality though, I would say I got seriously into animating in 7th grade when I took my first media tech class with an awesome teacher, Mr. Burke. He didn’t explicitly teach the class how to use Flash, but he showed us the world of the most amazing resources called, “the internet”. From there, I was hooked because I had the tools to create the flash animations I grew up watching as a kid. So the next few years, I just animated stick figures fighting and I guess I could legitimately call myself an animator.

How about game development?

Before dreaming of becoming an animator, I remember wanting to be a game developer/maker/designer/whatever I thought they were called. However, I didn’t start developing games until my sophomore year at UW. After taking the intro classes to computer science, I decided to put some of that knowledge to use and make some games in Unity.

Proof of wanting to be a game developer in 2005 (still got like 1 ¼ years to go!)

What games made the most impact on you?

There are a lot of games that made a big impact on me. To start, the games that inspired me to create games are Braid, Undertale, Thomas Was Alone, Portal, To the Moon, Limbo, and Inside. All being very atmospheric indie game titles with an interesting story. Other ways games impacted me include connecting myself with friends and just straight up addiction. Dota 2, TF2, Minecraft, and most Blizzard games are games that connect me with friends who I will play with for life. On the other hand, Tetris and Bejeweled are games I will find myself playing non-stop in solidarity for the rest of my life. Those are addicting games and sometimes I wish I could stop playing them.

Tell us about them. Tell us about your role and experience on WAFA the game. What did you learn on the project and what did you hope to do going forward on the game?

My role on WAFA the game is the main game developer. I learned a lot about creating pipelines that allow other team members to help develop the game in Unity. I also learned that it’s very easy to underestimate the amount of time it takes to implement something into a game. There are a lot of things I would change about the current state of development, and we hope to fix those issues going forward so we can finish the game faster.

Basically my code sucks and rushing to meet deadlines will typically lead to a lot of bugs (but mainly because my code sucks. If you’re a hiring manager, please ignore this sentence).

What do you enjoy most about being a Broom Kid?

Being able to make cool projects with my talented friends and being able to share the projects with the world! It makes me really happy to see people enjoying the work we make.